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Committee hears heated testimony on curbing ‘stacking’ of Education Freedom Accounts and private scholarships
Summary
HB 1803 would bar students from accepting both Education Freedom Account funds and Education Tax Credit scholarships in the same program year. Supporters of choice said the measure would reduce double‑paying; families and donor groups warned it would remove key funding that allows low‑ and moderate‑income and special‑needs students to attend nonpublic schools that meet their needs.
Representative Sally Fellows introduced HB 1803, a bill aimed at preventing students from receiving funds from the two state‑linked school‑choice pathways — Education Freedom Accounts (EFA) and Education Tax Credit (ETC) scholarships — during the same program year. The sponsor said the intent is to avoid a small number of students receiving multiple sizable awards from separate state‑linked channels and to preserve finite education dollars.
DOE fiscal context and VLACS/VLACC interactions: Department staff supplied enrollment and funding data explaining how VLACCs (virtual charter courses) are funded for part‑time and full‑time students and how overlap among pathways can occur. DOE said full‑time VLACC students are funded directly and that part‑time VLACC enrollments generate partial adequacy payments; DOE policy does not duplicate full‑time funding across pathways.
Split public testimony: Testimony was sharply divided. Dozens of parents, grandparents and single parents described relying on combined EFA and ETC support to afford private or charter options that met their children’s special needs or offered a safer climate. Many described being unable to return their children to local public schools for reasons including repeated IEP implementation failures. Donors, scholarship advocates and private‑school operators, however, warned that carving away the ability to “stack” private scholarships with EFA would shrink the private donation pool and disproportionately hurt the lowest‑income families who rely on both sources.
Legal and fiscal mechanics: Witnesses and DOE clarified mechanics: ETC is a private donation program whose donors receive a tax credit (85% credit to donors), while the EFA is a state appropriation routed to accounts for eligible students. Committee members sought clarity on caps (ETC is capped in statute at $6 million in credits per year, though actual credits issued are less), the distribution of scholarship awards (widely varying minima and maxima by school on available reports), and whether parents must consent to Medicaid billing for eligible services. Several testified that many students in ETC also receive EFA funds (DOE fiscal note flagged a large overlap), which prompted the sponsor to argue the combination can result in a single student drawing significantly more public‑connected dollars than peers.
Committee direction and concerns: The committee heard requests for more transparent reporting from scholarship organizations and clearer statutory language to prevent unintended consequences (for example, losing carryover EFA balances from a prior year). Several members urged caution about creating winners and losers among students and asked DOE to quantify how many students would be affected by a prohibition.
Ending: The committee closed the hearing after extensive public testimony and asked DOE and scholarship administrators for additional data to quantify overlap and fiscal exposure.
